n in the Sault au Matelot, won't cash the best
orders in the regiment for less than forty per cent. discount!"

"That is true!" broke in another officer, whose rather rubicund face
told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,--good wine and
good dinners generally. "That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a
broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence to ask me
fifty per cent. discount upon my drafts on Bourdeaux! I agree with Des
Meloises there: business may be a good thing for those who handle it,
but devil touch their dirty fingers for me!"

"Don't condemn all of them, Emeric," said Captain Poulariez, a quiet,
resolute-looking officer. "There is one merchant in the city who carries
the principles of a gentleman into the usages of commerce. The Bourgeois
Philibert gives cent. per cent. for good orders of the King's officers,
just to show his sympathy with the army and his love for France."

"Well, I wish he were paymaster of the forces, that is all, and then I
could go to him if I wanted to," replied Monredin.

"Why do you not go to him?" asked Poulariez.

"Why, for the same reason, I suppose, so many others of us do not,"
replied Monredin. "Colonel Dalquier endorses my orders, and he hates the
Bourgeois cordially, as a hot friend of the Intendant ought to do. So
you see I have to submit to be plucked of my best pen-feathers by that
old fesse-mathieu Penisault at the Friponne!"

"How many of yours have gone out to the great spread at Belmont?" asked
Des Meloises, quite weary of commercial topics.

"Par Dieu!" replied Monredin, "except the colonel and adjutant, who
stayed away on principle, I think every officer in the regiment, present
company excepted--who being on duty could not go, much to their chagrin.
Such a glorious crush of handsome girls has not been seen, they say,
since our regiment came to Quebec."

"And not likely to have been seen before your distinguished arrival--eh,
Monredin?" ejaculated Des Meloises, holding his glass to be refilled.
"That is delicious Burgundy," added he, "I did not think any one beside
the Intendant had wine like that."

"That is some of La Martiniere's cargo," replied Poulariex. "It was kind
of him, was it not, to remember us poor Bearnois here on the wrong side
of the Atlantic?"

"And how earnestly we were praying for that same Burgundy," ejaculated
Monredin, "when it came, as if dropped upon us by Providence! Health and
wealth to Captain La Ma